Tomorrow when I wake up November will be behind me. The bad memories can rest until next year. It is not like shutting a door and moving on, it is just closing a door and living my life. It all sounds good, doesn't it? And I really wish it worked that way, but it doesn't.
I sometimes long for the days gone by when the only thing I had to worry about was whether I would be scared when my brother hid and jumped out at me in the darkened path on the way to the outhouse in the middle of the night! Or whether one of us would drown in Vincents sandpit where we were cooling off on a hot summer day. Or whether one of us would choke to death on a bone lodged in our throat from the big old Carp that momma caught in the Arkansas River when she seined for our supper. Or whether that green Peach I stole off the tree by the chicken house was going to kill me for sure this time.
I remember the rabbit hutches and the babies that grew to be our supper. I remember the nasty old Muscovy Ducks foraging for a scrap of something in the bottom of the mudholes behind the house where the kitchen sink drained out a pipe from the house. I remember how the big red rooster used to seek me out and chase me out of the barnyard. I remember my brother putting the baby kittens in a sack and throwing them in the river. He wasn't being mean, he was doing as he was told. Momma could hardly feed us, let alone a bunch of kittens.
Momma always said that people are like the seasons. Babies are born like the Spring and are fresh and new and flourish, but when we get old we are like the Autumn. We lose our leaves and and become skeletal like the barren tree against a cold dark sky.
I have always accepted life in that manner. I look around at my friend pool, and it is about dried up! That young girl that used to race out the door and down the street to dance all night has ceased to exist. The auburn hair is white now and the barefeet that used to fly across the floor are encased in a pair of orthopedic shoes. The catfish that used to be fun to catch, dipped in corn meal and fried has been replaced by some sort of white, flaky stuff raised on a farm somewhere in a spring fed lake. Most meals are steamed and fried is a thing of the past.
Fall is here and Winter is on the way! That means I have to be careful not to slip and fall and wind up with a broken hip. I have no desire whatsoever to jump in a snow drift or even throw a snowball at the mailman, or mailwoman as the case may be! A trip out back with a bucket of water for the geese is about all the excitement this old broad can handle!
But I remember! The kids today will never know the joy of walking home from school in knee deep snow. They will never know the joy of a pair of galoshes with fur around the top that Santa Claus brought to replace the black ones that Jake grew out of and passed down to me. They will never know the closeness of sleeping in a bed with 3 other kids. They will never know what joy a Saturday night bath in a big aluminum tub was!
The older I get, the fonder the memories become! Momma always told me that someday my childhood would be something I would look back on and smile. Something that would bring me joy. And momma was right!
Momma was always right!
